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Maine Green Tours for Summer 2013

The Green Tours for the Family Nature Summits are coming together now, although I’m still trying to fit everything together like a puzzle, and as usual, I have too many places I want to see. Here’s a sneak peek of the likely tour locations for this year’s tours.

Blue Hill / Ellsworth Green Tour – July 10

The Blue Hill / Ellsworth communities are filled with innovators focusing on local, organic food and green building. Blue Hill was the third town in Maine to pass a “local food ordinance” which allows local farmers to sell their products to their neighbors without governmental involvement. The exact tour locations are being finalized, but likely locations will be:

From a Trashmagination perspective, the stop that I’m most excited to see is The Arkhaus, so fingers crossed their renovations will be progressed enough to the point where we can visit. The idea of building a comfortable, happy home from shipping containers sounds wonderful.

If We Had More Time, I Wish We Could Visit Harborside

I wish we had just a little bit more time because there is a community about 1.5 hours from Bar Harbor called Harborside that has two stops I would LOVE to see. One is the farm called Four Season Farm run by Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch, pioneers in organic farming. If you have read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, you are familiar with Joel Salatin from Polyface Farm in Virginia, and the Four Seasons Farm runs on similar systems. Chickens and other animals are managed from one part of the farm to the other in a way that best enriches the soil and creates delicious meat.

Also in Harborside in the Good Life Center, which was the home of Helen and Scott Nearing. They came to this part of the world as part of the “back to the land movement” and their homestead is a museum to that movement.

Thank You For Your Help!

Thank you to my friend Amy Grant for her advice on tour stops, and to my friend Laura Cunningham for putting me in touch with her cousin Peter D’Entremont, an architect in the area.